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Ah yes the fantasy that an IC can just magic this all away. This would likely result in a CEO with no pull and a CFO that had all the hard power to call the sh

Ah yes the fantasy that an IC can just magic this all away. This would likely result in a CEO with no pull and a CFO that had all the hard power to call the shots. The reality seems to be, for some reason, building profitable and safe planes in America is becoming increasingly difficult. A company most be able to do both: build a quality and safe product and make a margin. It can’t exist without revenue. I’m guessing the real problem is somewhere between low quality or overworked and poorly trained line workers, complex systems, and a revenue strategy that obscures what the company is selling. It takes more than a random ic manager to fix that — but I agree they should come from that past maybe.

sebzim4500 3y ago
>The reality seems to be, for some reason, building profitable and safe planes in America is becoming increasingly difficult. Is there another data point or are you just basing this off Boeing's issues?
- jacquesm 3y ago
  The other datapoints have been merged into Boeing or they went away, Lockheed hasn't made a passenger plane for decades. Gulfstream doesn't really count I think, because it isn't in competition with either Boeing or Airbus.
TylerE 3y ago
Building airplanes it a bit like running a restaurant... it's a business no sane person would willingly go in to.
- randmeerkat 3y ago
  > Building airplanes it a bit like running a restaurant... it's a business no sane person would willingly go in to. Other people with a similar perspective about rockets tried to convince Musk that as well. Thankfully he didn’t listen. You’re never going to realize gains that surpass the return on the S&P if you don’t take risks in business.
  - TylerE 3y ago
    Musk is an interesting standards bearer for sanity.
    - randmeerkat 3y ago
      > Musk is an interesting standards bearer for sanity. Think what you will about Musk, but SpaceX has completely revolutionized space travel and will be in the history books a hundred years from now.
      - TylerE 3y ago
        And dozens of his projects have utterly failed. Remember The Boring Company? Hyperloop? The-site-formerlly-and-forever-known-as-Twitter-until-Musk-ruined-it? Throw an unlimited supply of darts and you're going to get a few bulleyes. Doesn't make you the worlds greatest dart's player.
        randmeerkat 3y ago
        > And dozens of his projects have utterly failed. Remember The Boring Company? Hyperloop? The-site-formerlly-and-forever-known-as-Twitter-until-Musk-ruined-it? You say dozens and name two, one of which (X) is still up and running with active user engagement. Many people have thrown darts, none have developed self-landing reusable rockets and outcompeted ULA or developed a satellite based global internet provider. Not even Google at its peak was able to come up with anything better than Project Loon. I’ll concede there’s a little luck in every venture, but what Musk and SpaceX have accomplished is well beyond luck and quite remarkable.
        dabraham1248 3y ago
        I mean, I dispute your implication that he's not destroying twitter (I mean, ever since he took it private we don't have hard numbers. But that itself doesn't suggest _good_ things). But aside from that, and the two examples above, 1. x.com (the original) 2. tesla has been killing way more people since he retroactively became a founder (there was a delay while existing products moved through the pipeline) 3. solarcity 4. optimus 5. neuralink (well, ok, it hasn't failed yet. But _I'm_ not betting on it...) 6. the Tham Luang cave rescue 7. crypto 8. his relationships with his kids / exes TBF, spacex appears to be his baby, and it has done _much_ better than I ever thought it would. There are rumors about the existence of a whole team there preventing him from breaking things, and personally, I believe them. But I have nothing _remotely_ like proof. And even if those rumors are true, spacex appears to have been his idea, he hired the first batch of people, etc. He can definitely take loads of credit for it, even if I don't think he deserves as much of said credit as he clearly thinks he deserves.
Certhas 3y ago
No matter how profitable building good planes is, building slightly worse planes that are bought in equal numbers is more profitable. The profit maximizing move is to lower quality until sales suffer more than profitability is increased. And if you have a strong reputation, and feedback cycles on product quality are long, lower quality might take a long time to actually be noticeable in sales. Boeing profits and sales had been on a steady upwards trajectory for 20 years until 2019: https://www.helgilibrary.com/charts/boeing-profits-sales-quarterly https://www.helgilibrary.com/charts/boeing-profits-sales-qua...
- toast0 3y ago
  The trick is building worse planes may result in future costs to fix the problems. It's much less costly to bolt the door plug in before it falls out.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    They got so lucky with that one.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  At least they get to blame it on COVID. The real benchmark is relative to Airbus.

sebzim4500 3y ago

>The reality seems to be, for some reason, building profitable and safe planes in America is becoming increasingly difficult. Is there another data point or are you just basing this off Boeing's issues?

jacquesm 3y ago
The other datapoints have been merged into Boeing or they went away, Lockheed hasn't made a passenger plane for decades. Gulfstream doesn't really count I think, because it isn't in competition with either Boeing or Airbus.

TylerE 3y ago

Building airplanes it a bit like running a restaurant... it's a business no sane person would willingly go in to.

randmeerkat 3y ago
> Building airplanes it a bit like running a restaurant... it's a business no sane person would willingly go in to. Other people with a similar perspective about rockets tried to convince Musk that as well. Thankfully he didn’t listen. You’re never going to realize gains that surpass the return on the S&P if you don’t take risks in business.
- TylerE 3y ago
  Musk is an interesting standards bearer for sanity.
  - randmeerkat 3y ago
    > Musk is an interesting standards bearer for sanity. Think what you will about Musk, but SpaceX has completely revolutionized space travel and will be in the history books a hundred years from now.
    - TylerE 3y ago
      And dozens of his projects have utterly failed. Remember The Boring Company? Hyperloop? The-site-formerlly-and-forever-known-as-Twitter-until-Musk-ruined-it? Throw an unlimited supply of darts and you're going to get a few bulleyes. Doesn't make you the worlds greatest dart's player.
      - randmeerkat 3y ago
        > And dozens of his projects have utterly failed. Remember The Boring Company? Hyperloop? The-site-formerlly-and-forever-known-as-Twitter-until-Musk-ruined-it? You say dozens and name two, one of which (X) is still up and running with active user engagement. Many people have thrown darts, none have developed self-landing reusable rockets and outcompeted ULA or developed a satellite based global internet provider. Not even Google at its peak was able to come up with anything better than Project Loon. I’ll concede there’s a little luck in every venture, but what Musk and SpaceX have accomplished is well beyond luck and quite remarkable.
        dabraham1248 3y ago
        I mean, I dispute your implication that he's not destroying twitter (I mean, ever since he took it private we don't have hard numbers. But that itself doesn't suggest _good_ things). But aside from that, and the two examples above, 1. x.com (the original) 2. tesla has been killing way more people since he retroactively became a founder (there was a delay while existing products moved through the pipeline) 3. solarcity 4. optimus 5. neuralink (well, ok, it hasn't failed yet. But _I'm_ not betting on it...) 6. the Tham Luang cave rescue 7. crypto 8. his relationships with his kids / exes TBF, spacex appears to be his baby, and it has done _much_ better than I ever thought it would. There are rumors about the existence of a whole team there preventing him from breaking things, and personally, I believe them. But I have nothing _remotely_ like proof. And even if those rumors are true, spacex appears to have been his idea, he hired the first batch of people, etc. He can definitely take loads of credit for it, even if I don't think he deserves as much of said credit as he clearly thinks he deserves.

Certhas 3y ago

No matter how profitable building good planes is, building slightly worse planes that are bought in equal numbers is more profitable. The profit maximizing move is to lower quality until sales suffer more than profitability is increased. And if you have a strong reputation, and feedback cycles on product quality are long, lower quality might take a long time to actually be noticeable in sales. Boeing profits and sales had been on a steady upwards trajectory for 20 years until 2019: https://www.helgilibrary.com/charts/boeing-profits-sales-quarterly https://www.helgilibrary.com/charts/boeing-profits-sales-qua...

toast0 3y ago
The trick is building worse planes may result in future costs to fix the problems. It's much less costly to bolt the door plug in before it falls out.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  They got so lucky with that one.
jacquesm 3y ago
At least they get to blame it on COVID. The real benchmark is relative to Airbus.